The London Traveler

Some things make me very cross. Here’s one of them. It may not mean much to you.

The British Museum puts the Etruscans under ‘Roman’.

Okay, let’s explain. The Etruscans were the original inhabitants of much of Italy – before the Romans. They had a culture which was much more friendly to women (Rome was notoriously misogynistic), which produced brilliant art, which welcomed immigrants from Greece and Phoenicia, and which was highly literate (though we have only a few words of their language).

The Romans destroyed the Etruscans. They stole bits of Etruscan culture but they destroyed Etruscan society.

So it strikes me that filing the Etruscans under ‘Roman’ is not just ironic. It’s rather disrespectful.

Still, at least they have their own room – Room 71. And here you can see some really lovely work from their civilisation – which lasted five hundred years and which, many Etruscans seem to have believed,  would have a finite lifecycle just like a man, a tree, or a horse.

Etruscans were fine metalworkers in both bronze and precious metals. Even the bronze helmet, which must have been primarily functional, has an incredibly crisp design and execution. More startling is the gold jewellery, which uses techniques like filigree and granulation to create shimmering surfaces – incredibly detailed work considering these metalworkers had no magnifying glasses to make their work easier.

There are amazing bronze mirrors, too, with scenes from mythology incised on the back. Quite often, the Etruscans take Greek mythology as their subject – they had no qualms about borrowing stories from other pantheons and other peoples. Looking at the sheer number and beauty of these mirrors you just know that the Etruscans were a people who took their appearance very seriously.

And incredibly, you can even see a piece of Etruscan painting, 2,500 years old.

But the piece I always feel closest to is a sarcophagus – the tomb of Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa, who must have died about 150 BC and was buried near Chiusi, in Tuscany. It’s a fine work – look at the way she’s holding a mirror in her left hand, and wearing all her finest jewellery. She was clearly a wealthy woman.

She died when she was about 55 – we know this, and quite a lot of other things, from the analysis of the remains within the sarcophagus. We know what she looked like – her face has been recreated from the skull – and we know that this sarcophagus is, though idealised, a real portrait of her. We know that she had a bad accident in her teens – perhaps a riding accident. We know she had bad arthritis, and an abcess that probably gave her bad breath.  She probably couldn’t speak very easily, and mumbled, because of her jaw injury.

And we know this is a real portrait. You’re looking at a real woman here – an incredibly strange and powerful feeling.

There are so many other things to see in the British Museum. Romans, Greeks, Ancient Egypt; Lindow Man and medieval clocks, Japanese prints and Assyrian gates. But don’t miss the Etruscans. They’re worth knowing – as is Seianti Hanunia Tlesnasa

Photo credit: Seaianti Hanunia Tlesnasa, courtesy of Alun Salt on flickr 

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